beckyramone 's review for:

Memorial Drive: A Daughter's Memoir by Natasha Trethewey

5.0

emotional reflective sad medium-paced

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 Natasha Trethewey is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and Poet Laureate. So going into this I was wondering how much of poetry was going to be in the writing of the book, hoping that it wasn't so much that I couldn't follow it (I'm not a poetry person). Trethewey, of course, manages to perfectly use beautiful language to tell a heartbreaking narrative. The central focus of the memoir is her mother's murder by Trethewey's stepfather. We get what I feel is an unprecedented look at the thought process behind a domestic abuser's behavior through transcripts of phone calls between her stepfather and her mother. For me, part of my fascination with true crime is somehow wanting to find out why the murderer decided to murder. I know I'm never going to, but I can't help being so disturbed by it that I want to know why. I can honestly say, after reading the transcripts, that it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because the answer is just not being willing to feel any empathy. This book is not easy to read, I was very emotional reading it because Trethewey writes so beautifully about loss and grief.

If you would like to hear an extended conversation about this book, check out The Bookstore Podcast's Episode 83.